This blog post is the result of not being able to talk my way out of doing something. Seriously. You might think you have the perfect excuse to dodge doing the work, but some folk just won’t be deterred. That’d be Frankie Whelan in this case (his blog hop post here). You can find out about his books here.

So without any further delays, let’s crack on with the questions.

1. What am I working on?

I’m currently working on three separate stories that I hope to eventually make into comics. The story that has my primary focus currently is a short story about a moutain climber. It’s still in the very early stages so there isn’t much to it yet aside from the lead character and a couple of scenes in the story.

The second is a story about a young man that has a reality that exists in parallel to ours revealed to him. The creatures that populate that world are quite different from anything he has ever seen before. The story will follow him as he attempts to survive this new reality.

The third is about an outcast mage living among regular people. He has to take action when a war between various magical factions begin to threaten those he cares about.

2. How does my writing differ from others of its genre?

I would like to think that there are unique characters not seen before in other writings. And a different twist on familiar stories. It’s still early days with the writing so I’ve yet to see if the writing measures up to my aspirations.

3. Why do I write what I do?

I enjoy the magic of creating characters and seeing what happens to them in the world they inhabit. There really is nothing quite like writing a story, it’s one of the few truly free things a person can do. Something that didn’t exist is slowly built up by pen or keyboard.

Writing is something that I’ve always done. I can remember writing my own comics and short stories from a very young age. My dad would bring home a box of paper from work so I was never short of something to write on. It was just such a natural past-time for me growing up. It was probably all the gods, monsters and super-heroes that appealed to me then, and still does.

4. How does my writing process work?

Almost without fail, it begins with a character. They appear in my head and slowly reveal parts of their personality and their mannerisms. Then it’s a matter of getting them to explain what it is they want to do.

Once I have a feel for the story, I try and get the major plot points noted down to get a sense of the overall story. The next course of action is to put together the first draft of the story. This will allow me to see where the plot holes are or what isn’t working in the story.

This isn’t going so well with the current stories as the dreaded writers block has put the brakes on any progress. Usually when this happens I’ll move over to another story I’m working on. But this time all the stories are currently at an impasse. Even going back to an earlier point in the story hasn’t helped. So the stories have been put away in the hope that a spark of inspiration will happen while reading a book or watching a movie.

And so here I am doing the blog hop in the hope that putting a blog post together will get the old writing/creative gears turning once again. All finger-crossing and rabbit-foot rubbing will appreciated. 😉

Waterbears can go without food or water for more than a decade. They can survive temperatures from zero to above the boiling point of water, pressure six times stronger than the deepest ocean trench, radiation hundreds of times higher than the fatal dose for a human, and the vacuum of space.

fucking rich white people laughing at how poverty is some diet they should try.

Social experiments where wealthy people say they’re going to live on a budget below the poverty line for a month don’t accomplish much more than partonize people actually living in low income situations with no end in sight. It was the exact problem I had with Morgan Spurlock’s “30 Days” thing where he and his wife lived on minimum wage for a month, they didn’t behave like people living with the reality of poverty, they lived like two useless rich people who had their credit cards taken away for a couple weeks. It’s super easy to run up a lot of debt and make dumb decisions in money management if you know you’re going to be rich again in a couple weeks just like it’s super easy to stick to an extreme diet for a month. When people watch someone live on foodstamps for a month to prove a point and say “ha ha you’re gonna lose ten pounds and look great!” they’re showing a complete inability to extrapolate that situation to a long-term scenario. “Oh wow, you’re gonna lose weight because you’ll be undernourished!” And that’s good? They’re supposed to just enjoy being malnourished and losing weight until when? They get sick and die?

And I mean, sure, it’s totally doable to live on $133 a month for food, but wow does a super restrictive food budget ever suck when there’s no end in sight. The world is just a grey and shitty place when you’re malnourished and eating the same meal of watered down soup and rice every day for the indefinite future. When I was at my worst my hair was falling out, I was dizzy and passing out all the time. Like in public, standing at the mall, suddenly on the ground. Talking to a kid on the lawn, on the ground. I cracked my head open on a tile floor and knew a trip to the hospital wasn’t in the budget so I ended up just hoping for the best that I didn’t have a brain hemorrhage. There’s a dull ache in that part of my skull to this day. That’s not the kind of life experience you get from one month of living on rice and beans when you know there’s a sweet steak dinner with your name on it in four weeks.

Donald Andrews Jr. A Black man and Business Owner from New York was cleared just last April After being Arrested on Drugs Charges in Scotia, New York. Police were “suspicious” of Donald Andrews Jr.’s store, which sells incense and smoking paraphernalia, and sent undercover informants several times in March. In one of the informants visits he is seen on Andrews hidden camera planting Crack Cocaine on the counter in Andrews Store.

Andrews was arrested in April 2013 and cleared only after he asked a Grand Jury to watch the surveillance footage from his store. The informant used a cellphone photo he took of the planted drugs as evidence that Andrews was dealing, leading to his arrest.

*YES THIS IS FUCKING REAL LOOK IT UP*

The police claim that the informant has now “fled” and they haven’t found his whereabouts. The sheriff “claims” his investigators didn’t purposely framed Andrews and have the “informant” out to be some rogue agent.

FYI this same “informant” has lead to seven other drug-related arrests the Report says.

Sounds like a Movie right? But yall still out here calling people “conspiracy theorists”.